I. Residential Monuments

I.2. Residential Structures in Other Locations: Religious and Elite Residences

This type of residential site includes all monuments situated in any geographic locality other than those set on top of summits. Such habitations are found
on broad slopes (those with higher ground in the immediate area), valley bottoms, ravines, gorges, benches, esplanades, headlands, and at the foot of or in
escarpments and outcrops. However, such sites are seldom found in the midst of large exposed plains. The same kind of constructional and design elements
exhibited by the summit residences are part of this category of archaic sites. The majority of them appear to have been habitations for religious and other
high social status forms of residency. We might expect that, when most of the population of the JangtangByang thang was housed in black yak hair tents (dranaksbra nag) and other types of temporary
shelters, the occupation of highly weatherproof permanent habitations was a mark of social distinction and achievement. This, indeed, was the state of
affairs in the pre-modern JangtangByang thang. Cave residences are found throughout Upper Tibet, but in numbers that would not have permitted more than a small fraction of the total population to avail themselves
of such facilities in any given period (with the notable exception of GugéGu ge with its many
thousands of caves).